Minister of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources Ruslan Strilets said that the Ministry of Environment has estimated the amount of investment needed to implement more than 200 projects to treat various types of waste across the country at €4 billion.
To do this, the Ministry of Environment analyzed the problems and features of each region and the experience of European countries, he said in an interview with Ukrinform.
Strelets noted that based on this data, the Ministry has formed a plan for the location of new waste treatment plants in Ukraine. The plan includes several priority projects, including:
- In Kyiv region, construction of two waste processing plants that will process 470,000 tons of waste per year from at least 1.5 million residents.
He explained that deep sorting with the selection of resource-valuable materials (scrap metal, glass, plastic) and processing of organic waste with subsequent production of biomethane, etc., is foreseen at the factories. The project already has investors.
- Ivano-Frankivsk region has 5 waste processing plants with a capacity of more than 450,000 tons of waste per year from 1.4 million residents. Negotiations with investors have already begun;
- In Poltava region – construction of 4 factories in Lubny, Kremenchuk, Poltava and Kobelyaki. Negotiations with investors have already begun;
- Odesa region has 7 plants for processing waste from at least 2.3 million people.
It is noted that waste processing complexes are also planned to be built in Zakarpattia, Sumy and Kharkiv regions.
"I am sure that the implementation of 2-3 pilot projects for the construction of waste processing infrastructure – and we will no longer need to look for investors, they themselves will express interest in working in Ukraine. At the legislative level, we already have all the conditions for this, at the practical level, we are creating them together – with the responsible communities and European experts," said Strelets.
According to the Ministry of Environment, on Friday, March 1, the Cabinet of Ministers approved the technical requirements that waste incinerators in Ukraine, i.e. waste incineration plants, must meet.
This will help regulate the work of companies that will operate stationary or mobile incinerators. Currently, there is only one incinerator in the country, Energia, which has been operating in Kyiv since 1987.
It is noted that Ukraine, on its way to a circular economy, does not prioritize the construction of waste incineration plants, unlike waste treatment facilities. However, such conditions are part of the adaptation of Ukrainian legislation to European standards.
"So, if such plants will be created in Ukraine, then only with the use of the best available technologies and management methods," the press service explained. "The use of modern technologies and strict control over emissions will help ensure maximum efficiency and safety of the process."
It is noted that operators of waste incineration plants will be obliged to:
- implement measures to reduce emissions and discharges;
- to carry out constant monitoring of the operation of installations;
- measure indicators of the state of air, underground and surface water, soil, odors, noise pollution, etc.
Earlier, EcoPolitic wrote, that the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources has developed a draft law "On Environmental Tax for Waste Disposal and Mining Waste Disposal", which provides for a 10-fold increase in the tax rate for mixed household waste disposal.
As EcoPolitic previously reported, Minister of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources Ruslan Strilets said that all landfills should be closed, reclaimed, and forgotten as a bad dream. There are 207 locations in Ukraine where modern waste management facilities can be launched.
